Lovely maid, with rapture swelling,
Should these pages meet thine eye,
Clouds of absence soft dispelling;
Vacant memory heaves a sigh.
As the rose, with fragrance weeping,
Trembles to the tuneful wave,
So my heart shall twine unsleeping,
Till it canopies the grave!
Though another's smiles requited,
Envious fate my doom should be:
Joy for ever disunited,
Think, ah! think, at times on me!
Oft amid the spicy gloaming,
Where the brakes their songs instil,
Fond affection silent roaming,
Loves to linger by the rill--
There when echo's voice consoling,
Hears the nightingale complain,
Gentle sighs my lips controlling,
Bind my soul in beauty's chain.
Oft in slumber's deep recesses,
I thy mirror'd image see;
Fancy mocks the vain caresses
I would lavish like a bee!
But how vain is glittering sadness!
Hark, I hear distraction's knell!
Torture gilds my heart with madness!
Now for ever fare thee well!
[Illustration: AN ALBUM AUTHOR.]
It would be interesting as well as instructive to settle the difference
between love verses and nonsense verses, if this were the proper place
for doing so. But we are not yet come to the Prosody; nor shall we
arrive there very soon unless we get on with the Syntax.
Comparatives, when they may be explained by the word quam, than, require
an ablative case, as
Achilles Agamemnone velocior erat:
Achilles was a faster man than Agamemnon.
_Fast men_ in modern times are very apt to _outrun the constable_.
Tanto, by so much, quanto, by how much, hoc, by this, eo, by this, and
quo, by which; with some other words which signify the measure of
exceeding; likewise ætate, by age, and natu, by birth, are often joined
to comparatives and superlatives, as
Tanto deformissimus, quanto sapientissimus philosophorum.
By so much the ugliest, by how much the wisest of philosophers.
Such an one was Socrates. It is all very well to have a contemplative
disposition; but it need not be accompanied by a _contemplative nose_.
Quo plus habent, eo plus cupiunt:
The more they have the more they want.
This is a curious fact in the natural history of school-boys, considered
in relation to roast beef and plum pudding.
Maximum ætate virum in totâ Kentuckiâ contudi: